I've not found it necessary for a resupply ship. Troop ships are making single 'attack' runs, followed by a resupply run (ahem, Load Troops), during which they will (I *think*) refuel. Anyway, I only had issues after ordering the fleet to deploy on the far side of the galaxy, or after adding a transport with an obsolete design (old hyper and no solar panel... found my fleet cruising along at a whopping 8,000 with hyperdrives that allow 60,000...)

As for the actual invasion, the entire point is not to have a massive fleet to invade a single target, it's to have a ready pool of transports for invading multiple targets. I've found that the majority of cases require I send only 1 transport to take the planet (woohoo! Small port, with 1 division defending it), with typical exceptions requiring as many as 3 transports to overwhelm the defenders (small port 10 troops defending), or on the order of about a dozen to successfully slip past the defending large spaceport + defensive bases relatively intact (might lose a ship or three). Atypical exceptions needing 12 or more attacking ships to overwhelm the defenders (you might see a bug report of mine with a screenshot of 170 troops on the planet surface... there's a reason I didn't stop at 100 troops, the planet had something on the order of 60-80 troops on the surface, and I was aiming to minimize losses of my own troops -- training takes time).

As for loitering at planets you intend to capture -- Part of the goal is to take the infrastructure intact. If your ships loiter at the planet being invaded, they will attack merchants, trade fire with escorts, etc... Better to just remove them from the equation and let the land forces sort it out. You lose fewer transports, and you get more ships/bases when all is said & done.

Ships ordered to load troops can return with as few as 1 troop onboard -- returning full is not a requirement -- but simply ordering a fleet already at its home system to load troops will trigger only the non-full transports into hypering out for troops, whoever is left has a full load. (Haven't tried this mid-invasion... not sure if it will trigger ships on the way to invade to return early).

Going to the ship list is why I made my first troop fleets... the thing was taking 20+ seconds to load, on a per-ship basis for locating ships and picking targets, that was sub-optimal. So I threw a bunch of transports in a fleet and tried for what worked. //Torrenal

I have discovered the love for resupply ships when the range of ships is not infinite.

I had a war in a small, slow-tech galaxy in which I underestimated their troop power (you should think that twice the number would work, but no). I lost my troops, and had earlier turned off automatic recruitment, and forgotten to turn it on again.

I was stuck with a smaller enemy that had managed to grab a couple of minor systems from me. So he was feeling good, and refused a reasonable peace (in which I would build more troop ). So in order to force him to agree a reasonable peace I went ballistic in his home system and shot up everything (after they had shot my troops dead). So, killing a large space sation with 3 defensive turrets was kind of tought. I had to pick off the turrets on at a time then the station. Thing was, the massive shooting drained fuel from my ships, and when that happened it was quite handy to have a resupply ship on the gas giant in the system. Capturing a minor planet would not help much, as a sizeable fleet making return visits can run a place empty quite fast. If that matter, I was not very technologically advanced, running caslon fueled ships.

Before the war he was a single system empire. When I blockaded all his planets in the home system, he became more agreeable in peace talks.

I have also had remote colonies with poor fuel supply. As I like to have multiple quite powerful fleets spread around, I have experienced these outposts not being able to support a fleet doing the odd short pirate trip. This gives a resupply ship or two something to do between wars.

Might try more construction ships. I suspect you may be playing smaller maps than I do (I am in either the 1400 or the 1000 star games), so scarcity may be more of a factor, but in my games, once I crank out 10-20 construction ships (with a like number of productive colonies to support them) I find I have no resource shortages, fuel included (well... up until I make my death-wheels -- ~2000 firepower ships with ~3000-4000 fuel capacity each, which will suck any space port dry). In the early game, if I build a colony at great distance from other colonies, I'll explicitly task a construction ship with building a mining station at a fuel-bearing gas giant near the new colony (same system whenever possible). This not only makes fuel available at the new colony, it gets a construction ship in the area to build mining stations in the new region. //Torrenal

ORIGINAL: torrenal In the early game, if I build a colony at great distance from other colonies, I'll explicitly task a construction ship with building a mining station at a fuel-bearing gas giant near the new colony (same system whenever possible). This not only makes fuel available at the new colony, it gets a construction ship in the area to build mining stations in the new region.

Some advice for even experienced players to notice : 1) If you plant a colony near the home systems of 2-3 ai clustered together, then when the spaceport is built, trade will go way up, and your port will build lots of freighters for you. A bonus is that you will buy lots of resources from the ai empires to build those ships, denying them the opportunity to build up their own merchant fleets using those resources.

2) Sell your territory map and tech to ai right after taxes are collected and before they spend the money on colony ships. You can determine this by watching your cash balance early in the game, or your civilian's cash balance later on, in the empire summary screen...

3) A rapidly expanding player empire with 19 ai empires to trade with can just about finance its own expansion by selling territory map updates to the dumbo ai empires.

4) When you first meet an ai empire, its opinion of you is low. Buy its galaxy map and get all of its tech and cash on the first trade selling what are obsolete techs for you. Then turn right around and give it a large cash gift. Get your money back by selling obsolete techs, repeat until it is friendly. Then get a free trade agreement. Once you trade with it again, you will notice that the obsolete techs are no longer listed, just the latest ones. Now you give a gift of cash and get it right back by selling your territory map. In the process above you should have made the ai happy with you to about 48 to 64. If it is less, then you did not repeat the trading enough. If it is more then you gave too much...

5) When you discover a spaceport in one of the restricted zones, then IF you immediately buy 4 ships there, they will build on the next turn. IF you choose your design right, then you can get 7-8 size 850 cruisers from the resources of a single zone port. So the trick is that you do NOT enter the zone unless you have enough cash to buy those cruisers...

6) An absolute top priority very early in the game is throwing enough cheap explorers at the map to find the NEXUS OF THE RED CLAW ruins. That gets you the yard tech to build big ships. Also very very important is finding the Imperial Archive so that you get the government type "Way of the Ancients".

7) When you can build big ships and have long range scan technology, design an explorer with a LONG RANGE scanner (size 72 component) on board, with an extra reactor or two and 400-800 fuel. Build one at every spaceport which is near a nebula so that you can find the restricted zones which seem to be most likely to be in nebulas. Later on in the game, you can use those poor busted up old LR scan explorers at systems whose spaceport does not yet have its LR scan active...

8) Kill pirate bases as often as possible to get your reputation up to heroic. At that level your AI empire relations can be improved up to 27 happiness points. Some ai are not impressed, for them the maximum is 7 points. Your own population becomes happier by about 7 points plus racial and empire bonuses.

9) The happiest fast growing races are Atuuk, Securan, and Shandar...

10) Once your reputation is heroic, send big cruisers or capital ships to those independent colonies which you were previously unable to plant because they were "unlikely" to "most unlikely" to colonize. Have them patrol the colony while your colony ship is on the way. When your colony ship is within about 3-4 days of planting, on final approach do a save game. Select the independent colony and watch the colony plant. If it fails, then reload your save game and select the patrolling warship. If the colonization still fails, Try one more trick - select NOTHING and watch the colony plant. If even that fails, your reputation, although heroic is probably still not at maximum, so tell the colony ship to "hold at" just short of planting. As your game proceeds, try planting after saves until you finally get the obstinate colony planted. This is a game exploit...

when you first start the game, and you want to get off to a faster start, immediatly design an impossibly large space port for your homeworld, and when i say impossibly i mean IMPOSSIBLY, if it dosent cost over 30k to retrofit your starting medium its just not big enough!

40 docking ports 20 shipyards 50 maxos blasters 10 of each of the manufacturers 5000 shield power 400k research in every field

these are the stats i use for it.

its so big in fact, that sometimes i will have to restart the game because it hangs at 98% on the homeworld, even if its already done (station grows).

however, doing this will cause the beginning game to be much more smoother, you will have alot less clutter in your shipyards waiting to be built, and you wont have as many resource problems as a result.

when you first start the game, and you want to get off to a faster start, immediatly design an impossibly large space port for your homeworld, and when i say impossibly i mean IMPOSSIBLY, if it dosent cost over 30k to retrofit your starting medium its just not big enough!

Egads, what's the maintenance on that beast?

What's the point of this? Besides costing you a whole room full of pretty pennies? I'm not clear what the advantage is, in having such a monolithic space port. Sure, you get the civvie ships out quicker, but is it really necessary? Does it pay off, considering that the upkeep on the moon-sized-port is probably more than your homeworld makes in a decade?

check the strength of your troops, if your playing a weak race, you may find that fielding robotic troops is actually a better choice than your own... for my recent game, the securian race only had a 7000 troop strength, but the robots had 6000... not too shabby for such a cheaper replacement

EDIT: the maintenance was only around 13k VERY manageable if you ask me, for being such a help early game

there are alot of advantages to it.

your research potential is always enough to prevent wasted points.

getting civilian ships out of the docks means resources will start moving alot quicker, try it a few times i bet you will notice a difference. i did!

you can start exploring the galaxy faster by queing up 20 explorers, usually i field 20 or so in 1400 star games.

later in the game, when strategic resources are well stocked, it makes building custom fleets alot faster. since you can build all of them at once.

i promise that you will notice a difference in resources moving around, luxury resources still move kinda slowly, but strategic resources move very well. for most of the early game, especially if i find some good lost colonys, there will STILL be ships waiting to start being built at the spaceport, for months!! even with 20 shipyards... i couldent imagine how long it would take to field them if it was still a medium

if you are concerned about the matience cost of the space port, since its possible that the reason i find it manageable is due to the quality i put home systems on (i want them to feel meaningful to capture and to control).... remove the research labs (you wont need them) and shields from your small space port designs.

Are you building that massive space port right off the bat using an empire with starting expansion? How are you able to get the resources for it? When you first start you don't have anywhere near enough and I would think starting such a massive project early on would cripple your ability to do anything else that requires resources.

20 to start with, i usually build them in waves... and yes its starting expansion... dunno about the resource thing, i have been able to do it decently, it does get a little slow at first, but once the new civilian ships start rolling out its usually smooth sailing from there

check the strength of your troops, if your playing a weak race, you may find that fielding robotic troops is actually a better choice than your own... for my recent game, the securian race only had a 7000 troop strength, but the robots had 6000... not too shabby for such a cheaper replacement

EDIT: the maintenance was only around 13k VERY manageable if you ask me, for being such a help early game

there are alot of advantages to it.

your research potential is always enough to prevent wasted points.

getting civilian ships out of the docks means resources will start moving alot quicker, try it a few times i bet you will notice a difference. i did!

you can start exploring the galaxy faster by queing up 20 explorers, usually i field 20 or so in 1400 star games.

later in the game, when strategic resources are well stocked, it makes building custom fleets alot faster. since you can build all of them at once.

i promise that you will notice a difference in resources moving around, luxury resources still move kinda slowly, but strategic resources move very well. for most of the early game, especially if i find some good lost colonys, there will STILL be ships waiting to start being built at the spaceport, for months!! even with 20 shipyards... i couldent imagine how long it would take to field them if it was still a medium

if you are concerned about the matience cost of the space port, since its possible that the reason i find it manageable is due to the quality i put home systems on (i want them to feel meaningful to capture and to control).... remove the research labs (you wont need them) and shields from your small space port designs.

100?!? Egads, you're plaing on far different settings than me. No way I could afford that, without severely hammering my income. Maintenance on those buggers alone would come to 50k a year - a pretty hefty chunk. That's not to consider trying to manage that many freaking explorers. Go to war, and the swarm all heads to scout the enemy. A serious pain in the arse, if you're still trying to explore! 100 manual reassignments? Ugh!

Generally I use the "quick start" epic game setting, as the AI spread on the "new game" maps is atrocious - which means I generally have to be pretty careful about how I balance guns vs. butter. If there's a way (without using the editor) to alter home systems settings with this game start method, then I haven't seen it.

My main concerns are: 1. maintenance cost of the base. Sure, you crank out the civilian ships quicker, earning yourself port income. But that isn't endless - once the civvies have enough ships, you're left with an economic boat-anchor, and you will have traded quick explorer swarms for economic base - since those not using your tactic will have the same total money coming in over a longer period of time - without the incredible maintenance costs. Or that's how I see it - maybe I'm missing something here? But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the explorer spam can pay off - you're bound to find more abandoned ships and get more tech bonuses from being the first to the ruins - but it feels more like an exploit than a legitemate tactic, to me. Mrmm - I'll have to give this one some thought.

2. research labs - With vanilla RotS, it would make sense. Far better to stick them around black holes. But with RotS, my perception is that it's more efficient in terms of cost/performance, to have research facilities in your ports, since it's cheaper to pay the additional upkeep for the port, than it is to pay the upkeep on a whole new research station. I know the AI places a wretchedly low value on research stations, but it seems a bit silly to put all your eggs in one basket, and not spread out your research - so that one attack won't cripple your whole research infrastructure. Again, you don't HAVE to, but it seems again, an exploit - like having 30 research stations sitting around a single black hole in 1.06. You get gobs of research coming in, and I've yet to see the AI take a poke at them - but it feels like it's exploiting the stupidity of the AI, as opposed to playing with a "reasonable" empire setup.

Size 153, it costs a mere 1353 with 683 for upkeep and pumps out 100k research at base tech levels. At the very start I often build a couple at the homeworld if I don't see any planets to colonize yet. They build very quickly, so even if I find a planet right after I start one it won't be long before I can get the colony ship out. Then I scatter them around where there are research bonuses - special planets, black holes, supernovas, neutron stars. I believe only the highest bonus in a single research area actually counts, but I figure it doesn't hurt to collect the two highest just in case I lose a site in the future. Six of these stations will fill the early game need for research, then I just tack on a few more as needed. And the best part is, if I want to shift the focus of my research I'm not really losing much to scrap a few.

Thats another reason I keep research stations. I often like to specialize my research. For instance, early game I often focus primarily on colonization techs so I can start grabbing up those marshy swamp, ocean, and desert planets before my neighbors do (especially if I find loros fruit or korabban spice). But after I get those basic colonization techs I usually swap the focus toward hyper drives and fusion reactors to make my transport ships faster and more fuel efficient so they can keep up with my expansion. I like the missile weapons, so I generally put little focus on weapons tech - missiles are very light on the research requirements. When I want to swap research I just build a new station or two in that category and then scrap the ones I don't want.

2) Sell your territory map and tech to ai right after taxes are collected and before they spend the money on colony ships. You can determine this by watching your cash balance early in the game, or your civilian's cash balance later on, in the empire summary screen...

How do you identify this moment? Edit: forget that, my brain-dead-not-reading. I'll have to try this.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jeeves

5) When you discover a spaceport in one of the restricted zones, then IF you immediately buy 4 ships there, they will build on the next turn. IF you choose your design right, then you can get 7-8 size 850 cruisers from the resources of a single zone port. So the trick is that you do NOT enter the zone unless you have enough cash to buy those cruisers...

I haven't tried this. So what happens to those resources if you don't use them straight away? If you don't have the cash on hand to make the immediate purchases - why can't you buy them later?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jeeves

7) When you can build big ships and have long range scan technology, design an explorer with a LONG RANGE scanner (size 72 component) on board, with an extra reactor or two and 400-800 fuel. Build one at every spaceport which is near a nebula so that you can find the restricted zones which seem to be most likely to be in nebulas. Later on in the game, you can use those poor busted up old LR scan explorers at systems whose spaceport does not yet have its LR scan active...

As a warning regarding this tip, having all those LR scanner equipped ships running around will cause SERIOUS performance degradation. You'll find that they will make DW unplayably slow.

5) When you discover a spaceport in one of the restricted zones, then IF you immediately buy 4 ships there, they will build on the next turn. IF you choose your design right, then you can get 7-8 size 850 cruisers from the resources of a single zone port. So the trick is that you do NOT enter the zone unless you have enough cash to buy those cruisers...

I haven't tried this. So what happens to those resources if you don't use them straight away? If you don't have the cash on hand to make the immediate purchases - why can't you buy them later?

The resources stay until they are consumed, through shipbuilding usually. Or until the base is scrapped. It may sometimes be a good idea to scrap those bases as soon as convenient. Otherwise one should have an eye on where the ships retrofit/refuel. Those restricted zones are slow to get out of.

Jeeves' main point about having the money to buy those cruisers on hand is that, when you wait too long (however long that is), the orders you place at such a base do not complete as quickly.

Btw: in none of my games to date (not too many, yet) I could build size 850 cruisers by the time I found the last of those restricted zone spaceports. I always get them pretty quickly, scouting and buying info from pirates aggressively. If you find the right ruins on some planet in time, this would be different.

quote:

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jeeves

7) When you can build big ships and have long range scan technology, design an explorer with a LONG RANGE scanner (size 72 component) on board, with an extra reactor or two and 400-800 fuel. Build one at every spaceport which is near a nebula so that you can find the restricted zones which seem to be most likely to be in nebulas. Later on in the game, you can use those poor busted up old LR scan explorers at systems whose spaceport does not yet have its LR scan active...

As a warning regarding this tip, having all those LR scanner equipped ships running around will cause SERIOUS performance degradation. You'll find that they will make DW unplayably slow.

You shouldn't have *that* many explorers equipped thusly. The point is to use them to look for the remaining specials and to get coverage of where your stationary scanner installations don't reach. Not that there should be a need to find more hidden specials. Unless something significant has changed since my last pre-expansion game, I'd expect to have found everything of note in the galaxy through other means before reaching this technology level. A use a small number of LR scanner equipped exploration ships to look for pirate bases or derelict ships.

Spaceports and stuff are usually more of a problem regarding scanners. In my last game(s) my spaceports starting with the medium model had those, and later in that game I had several hundred such spaceports... This may be almost as bad as installing the scanners on too many ships, but my guess is that ships are worse, as they tend to move around and so they may cause more updates to the galaxy map view.

Still, it may be a good idea to leave LR scanners out of spaceports and build specialized monitoring stations instead.

quote:

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

they also eat fuel like its going out of style

Agreed. And the size of 72 units should make everyone pause. How much additonal propulsion and fuel cells would a ship need to compensate for this? Or other compromizes, like reduced general fitness for whatever primary role a ship has to fill? These components are strictly for bases and one or two very specialized ship designs.

If you're going for an economic start, keep pirate bases alive, pay their protection (not alliance) fee, and sink your spare cash into buying discoveries whenever possible. Most of the time you'll just get info on ruins, but you'll end up finding abandoned and repairable ships, and sometimes even a WD, way earlier than the other empires will. As a bonus your bought pirates do a good job chasing away the construction and colony ships of other empires off your turf and let you maintain your pristine reputation.

Also if you double click the name of a ship you can view its cargo, design, and a few other details.

do you have tax rates set to automated? if so, your like i was for quite a while.

TURN IT OFF!!!

depending on your races happiness or your usage of space ports with medical/recreation facility's, your happiness could easily reach extremely high amounts... which in turn causes the tax rate to go to 50% with less than 500m population

needless to say this is bad, if you go manual, and turn the tax rate down to 0% on these worlds, they will grow extremely fast, with some races i have seen the population grow as much as 10-20 TIMES FASTER!

to be honest, i always thought that population growth was modified by happiness, and not tax rate, but i was very mistaken, its directly effected by your tax rate, and it dosent matter how happy your population is

yes, tax rate does indeed affect happiness, but happiness does not effect population growth, even a little bit.

also, because of the way taxes effect population growth, unless your running on hard times or you need the money for defense, i would leave all your worlds at 0% until they max out in population. assuming your in it for the long haul. the difference in growth rates is huge!

to be honest, the situation is kinda strange, i think that if you have a happy population, they should have a high population growth regardless of your tax rate, but it doesn't seem to work that way. happiness seems to go up and down for... i guess... chance at rebellion?

- Design a HIGH capacity research facility with 20 research labs, plus the necessary support equipment. No weapons, no armor and no shields. This base gives you 400k research capacity at "cheap" cost.

- Build it as soon as possible at your home world or on a very near research location at the beginning of the game, to make use of your research potential as soon as possible!! (You have around 500k research potential on initial game play).

- On later game, when you have build normal research facilities around research locations you can retire this initial research base.

- Pay pirates for protection; don't construct many military ships on the first years.

- Pay pirates 5.000 for colony locations, this way, you get materials and population faster. Depending on your finances consider paying 10.000 for interesting locations too.

- Construct mining stations for strategy materials, don't look for luxury on your first years, specially, be sure you have: steel, calson, polymer, carbon fiber..., those mining stations should be near your systems.

- Construct some extra exploring ships, but not too many. 3-7 extra exploring ships should be fine for the first year.

3) Quick develop your colonies:

- Design a cheaper small space port with no weapons, no shields and no research. Build it at your new colonies. Later on, when you see that this space port has queue a lot of ships you can consider retrofitting it to bigger designs.

4) turn off automatic troop recruitment. And be polite to your neighbours, at least in the first years :)

5) Consider building a resort base once you get your firsts colonies and you have build your basic strategic resources mining stations.

- Design a HIGH capacity research facility with 20 research labs, plus the necessary support equipment. No weapons, no armor and no shields. This base gives you 400k research capacity at "cheap" cost. Very good idea

- Build it as soon as possible at your home world or on a very near research location at the beginning of the game, to make use of your research potential as soon as possible!! (You have around 500k research potential on initial game play).

I'd suggest homeworld, since anywhere else is an easy target I'd say to have a slightly weaponized research base with 1 of each lab for bonus locations

- On later game, when you have build normal research facilities around research locations you can retire this initial research base. Personally I don't think you'd ever need to retire it

- Pay pirates for protection; don't construct many military ships on the first years. Beware that too many will bankrupt you

- Pay pirates 5.000 for colony locations, this way, you get materials and population faster. Depending on your finances consider paying 10.000 for interesting locations too. Scouts tend to work out cheaper if used correctly, but for some it's still handy

- Construct mining stations for strategy materials, don't look for luxury on your first years, specially, be sure you have: steel, calson, polymer, carbon fiber..., those mining stations should be near your systems. Another way could be to have a luxury collector aboard any normal station on planets with luxuries, the upkeep isn't that high

- Construct some extra exploring ships, but not too many. 3-7 extra exploring ships should be fine for the first year. Depends on the map, more stars = more scouts required

3) Quick develop your colonies:

- Design a cheaper small space port with no weapons, no shields and no research. Build it at your new colonies. Later on, when you see that this space port has queue a lot of ships you can consider retrofitting it to bigger designs. This will quickly become an easy target, it needs at least enough defence and firepower to hold off two destroyers, or survive until help arrives I have small ports on every colony I have, designed in such a way that the weapons and shields come online before completion

4) turn off automatic troop recruitment. And be polite to your neighbours, at least in the first years :) A good idea, but as soon as you suspect something happening, recruit troops, since it's not instant you still need time to build up defences

5) Consider building a resort base once you get your firsts colonies and you have build your basic strategic resources mining stations. Depending on who you ask, resorts are nearly as important as mining stations, since if built (and designed?) correctly they can be very profitable

- Design a new medium station with a medical and a recreational center. - Retrofit your home space station to this new station, and you will get more money because your population is happier. Left the automatic taxes on, it works fairly well.

@BigWolf, all this advise is for take quickly advantatge on an earlier game, 1-2 years. I have won games with home system on Harsh and AI home system on normal settings (it's better to retire 1 constructor and 1 destroyer with those hard settings). Of course you don't have to pay a monthly fee to pirates, only the first 6 months, and maybe a little more if you have not finished your initial infrastructure. On a later game, you have to kill pirates, build more explorers, increase your defenses...

quote:

I'd say to have a slightly weaponized research base with 1 of each lab for bonus locations

Troop ships again. In my games I make troop ships the biggest design I can build, with speed, protection, many troops and nothing else. Opposed to the default mini-ships I get my men down fast and have to do less herding. These only see use in taking big enemy worlds anyway. With the unhappiness factors in place I am bombing small enemy colonies and planting my own people there (far from being a nazi myself, in DW I go for racial purity as much as I can). The rep-hit I take seems worth it so far, if I dont go overboard and glass a homeworld (and I mitigate this by whacking pirates - show me a similarly easy way to deal with alive malcontents ).

Ah, the trade-offs... But not to worry, the way the game works I always get enough illegal aliens on my worlds for both bonus and unrest. And let´s not forget the homeworlds, for which I build my dreeadnought size troop transports. After all this strategy started when I burnt one instead of invading and suddenly both my empire split in half from unrest (seems my people looked up the meaning of "atrocity") and the rest of the galaxy declared war on me, including the seceded half of my domain. Did I ever before feel like Nixon at watergate must have? I would have lost the game if not for a recent autosave, but this is one of my " to the devs" moments.